About Me

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Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I am a beekeeper in Vancouver, British Columbia. The bees forage all the way up Stoney Creek by Burnaby Mountain.I am committed to not exposing my bees to chemicals for pest control or a quick fix to their health. I am committed to keeping them without treatment and I am working very hard to make this a success. I prefer my bees to feel like their sister's in the wild and a little bit more comfortable with the care I provide. Enjoy the pictures and follow my beekeeping endeavours.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Success in Requeening Matilda and Bombay

I have to thank James Macdonald the owner of Armstrong Apiaries for rescueing Matilda from being shut down and that allowed me to maintain my 2 hive operation. Actually, I have 3 hives now as the former queen of Bombay rules the newly set up nucleus colony, Camille. I called James on Saturday morning 4th July and left a voice message to order queens. He called me back within an hour or two and was very assuring that he would be able to solve my queen problems and he guarantees gentle quality queens. He sent out 2 queens by priority mail on Monday afternoon and they arrived on Tuesday morning July 6th in the package below.

The brown bag with holes is where the 2 queen cages were packed in. I picked up the package from the Post Office at 9am and brought them to work. After work, I installed one of the queens into Matilda who had the drone laying queen removed 2 days before.


My new queens travelled by Canada Post comfortably for 446km from Armstong to Coquitlam. They were in transit for less than 18hrs.

In the queen cage there were 4 attendant workers and the queen. They were moving in the cage in a circular manner all day long. Super active and very different from the queens from West Coast Bee Supplies. The pheromone from the new queen was strong, that she already had a bee from Matilda who could not wait to pay her allegiance to her future queen. This bee on the cage was so mesmerized feeding the new queen that she did not even care what was going on around her.


The bees of Matilda could not wait to free their new queen and was instantly busy eating the candy barrier. Do you notice the majority of the bees  in the photo facing the cage? They were clearly excited about their new queen.


3 days later, the new queen of Matilda has been released. This photo was taken yesterday. Notice the circle of attendants around her. She definitely commands alot of respect.  From reading the frames she started laying almost the moment she came out of the cage as the oldest larvae is already about 8 days old. Look at the size of her. She is HUGE! Her laying pattern is excellent. I saw 2 frames of freshly laid eggs. What a feeling of satisfaction that the new queen has convincingly taken over the rule of Matilda. All my worries since April have been set aside and I can sleep well at night knowing that Queen Matilda II is running her hive well =).  She moves around the frames in a steady and confident pace but when I attempted to pick her up to get marked, she can really sprint. I caught her anyway, firmly and carefully on her thorax.


She is now marked. She is in my queen marking cup waiting to dry the marker point on her back. The paint I use is a non-toxic ink. I marked her green which was 09' colors as I only have 2 hives and the color does not matter. If I had many more hives, I would follow the colors of the year. I mark my queens to ensure that if the hive created another queen to supercede her, I'll know that happened.

By the way, this is my 2nd hive inspection without gloves and have not got stung. My attitude towards them have changed. I am no more afraid or nervous around them, which I think they detected it before and was aggressive then. Now I am confident of my handling of the frames and  less bees get injured on each inspection. Maybe one or 2 still. It used to be more than 10 injured bees per inspection. To safer and happier beekeeping for them.

Poppy Flowers in Bloom

Last Saturday, 10th July, I dedicated my whole day to weeding my garden plot and when I got to the gardens I noticed Poppy flowers were in full bloom. It was beautiful. I also heard buzzing noises coming from the flowers and saw that my honey bees were buzzing all over them. I read before that bees could not see red and were not attracted to red flowers but poppies although have bright red petals have yellow/white pollen stamens and yellow ovules which are color spectrum that bees can see. The purple design on the poppy is also another color spectrum that attracts them. This variety of poppy below has similar characteristics to the Afghan Poppies.


I noticed that when the sun is at zenith, it is the best time to take pictures. Positioning yourself to capture the shot is easier as you don't cast a shadow on the subject, the subject of the photo comes out very clear and it is also easier for the camera to focus.


Above there are 2 bees working in this flower. If you were a bee, wouldn't it be fun playing in this deep flower with lots of sweet poppy nectar.


Bee: Should I go home or visit another flower?



Bee: Another Flower!!!  This is an Oriental Poppy above.


Hope you enjoyed the photos.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

1st Official Hive Inspection and creating a Nuc

On Sunday July 4th, Jacquie Bunse, the Bee Inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture of BC visited my hive for a hive inspection. I was delighted to have her over to be my mentor for the day and it was great to be able to ask all the questions I had about my hives. Jacquie has been a beekeeper for almost over 20years now and she was so willing to share as much knowledge she possibly could. Even after driving from Mt Currie in Pemberton to check on an apiary before coming to my apiary in Coquitlam, she seemed full of energy. She amazed me from the get go. She was not wearing gloves while going through my frames! I told her my bees can get aggressive especially that Sunday when the clouds were hanging low and it has been cool all day. I have been afraid of not wearing gloves for almost a year now. Getting stung on the fingers is really painful. The last time I got stung on my fingers was on my thumb and the next day it swelled so much that it feels like the skin around the thumb is going to explode. Since then, I have been using latex gloves that are thick enough to not allow the bee stings to penetrate the material. I was skeptical that she would not get stung and she did not. Well, she pointed out why my bees were aggressive towards me. She noticed I pulled the frames out too fast and it causes the bees on the other side of the frame not facing me to roll over and fall to the screened bottom. When they fall, they get agitated and start butting heads with me and try to sting wherever they can. So the trick was to take 1 or 2 frames out and lay it on the side of the hive to have more space while bringing out each frame and then pull out the other frames....SLOWLY! Since then, my last 2 inspections since July 4th, I have mustered the courage to not wear gloves. It was such a different experience beekeeping w/o gloves. I could feel the bees licking and crawling over my fingers,less of them got squashed and I felt more connected. I finally got to experience that my bees are really friendly and inviting as long as I had presence of mind while working with them. I owe this better experience of beekeeping to Jacquie. Thanks alot!




She thought me how to create a Nucleus hive which I used the replacement queen that Bob gave me, which by the way was a virgin queen that died in the cage when I checked again on July 6th. Probably because Bob did not add any attendant bees in the cage. I was expecting the virgin queen to die somehow as I knew not having attendants of her own, she would starve. Anyway, we created a 3 frame Nuc. We picked out a frame with honey and pollen stores on both sides, second frame with brood in all stages (some capped and some open brood)
 


and last frame with more brood and store. All the adhering bees on the frames were transferred over and we were looking out for frames that had mostly nurse bees.







Picked out another 2 more frames of nurse bees and shaked them on to the nuc box.






Thats a complete 3 frame nuc.





At the end of the hive inspection, no European Foul Brood or American Foul Brood was found. So the result is a positive :) My hives are healthy and is in good shape to receive their new queens. And I ended up with one more hive :)





Friday, July 2, 2010

Requeening Matilda Failed

The queen I bought yesterday has died. She died from suffocation on the candy. There was too much candy in the cage. She 1st got stuck half an hour after picking her up but she freed herself. The picture taken yesterday shows she was alright. At 630am, when I checked the queen cage, she was stuck. I was hoping that she would free herself again later. Every hour I checked. I had such a narrow view of her through the cage as her attendants were blocking and she never moved or struggle. When I got to the gardens, I had to investigate rather than wait 3 days till the bees eat the candy barrier to release her. I cut the cage open and found her head was covered with candy that has hardened. I tried reviving her by cleaning the candy off using Saline solution but it did not work. I'm at a lost right now. I'm too frustrated to go back to Bob and get back my $25. When I called him to tell him about the status of the queen, he blamed me for my handling. I really don't care what he says. Its as if I wanted to kill the queen. Matilda is now queenless. Will probably have to combine the hive soon and that would have to be done by Sunday. Absolutely dissapointed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My resolve is now stronger to be self sufficient in rearing my own queens next year.

The Queen has arrived

Just like the Queen of England who is in Canada now for Canada Day, my queen has arrived from West Coast Bee Supplies. What a day. I've been calling Bob about a month ago asking for queens. I think I've bugged him over the week several times checking if he was ready to sell me one. So finally on Tuesday when I called, he said he's got some. I made arrangements to reserve a queen and to pick it up today 1st July. I was excited. Finally I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with the drone laying queen problem I've had for the past 2 months. Can you imagine, Matilda has been with a drone laying queen for 2 mths and on Tuesday when I checked, they kicked her out, I hope, since I'm introducing a new queen. Well there can be more messy problems in the hive and mine aint' that bad. Nao who I met coincidentally at West Coast Bee Store was telling me she had her 2nd swarm. Thats what I call a messy problem. Glad that she managed to catch her swarm again. I'm most afraid now of a laying worker or worst several of them in Matilda.

I made all this arrangement to get to No.6 Rd in Richmond. Booked the Car Co-Op vehicle for several hrs and prepared the hive for the royal welcome. When I walked into the store, Bob was telling Nao how he found this 'dead' queen outside. When Nao left, I told Bob I was here to pick up the queen, he said he was sold out.... I lost my temper! My heart sank, time and money wasted. Frustrated, I dropped a few F bombs. He is clearly unreliable! As I was desperate for a queen. He said I could have the 'dead' one. She looked weak but mostly chilled as she was probably in the open for so long. I was put on a spot to decide and take a risk of buying a 'dead' queen. I agreed on buying her as long he guarantees that she is mated. So off he goes to collect some worker bees as her attendant. I observed he was taking foragers. He was catching bees that were at the entrance of the hive. A good beekeeping outfit selling queens will show you the mated queen laying and take nurse bees as her attendant. Nurse bees are preferred as they are young and are able to feed the queen with royal jelly and will be able to nourish the queen while she travels in the queen cage. Whereas Foragers are old bees and do not produce anymore royal jelly coz of its low in Vittelogen levels (Oliver. R, Scientific Beekeeping).

Its been about 12hrs since I picked up the new queen. Covered the queen cage with a damp paper towel and stored the cage in my jacket closet in a pocket of a jacket to keep the queen warm. She is active and all the attendants are doing well. They seemed bloated with water. But I think that should be alright. Will be installing the queen Friday evening after work.

This queen cage above is a slow-release method for introducing the queen into Matilda. It is a recommended method so that the hive can get used to the new queen's pheromone and the queen is protected from possible assassination by the  the laying worker or other workers. Jackie Bunns have recommended that I place the queen cage next to open brood which I will be transferring from Bombay. I think the pheromones from the larvae will also suppress any workers from assuming the role of laying eggs and also the queen would spread her pheromones through the nurse bees to the larvae causing the hive to accept her. One way to tell if u have laying worker is the drones that emerge are smaller in size than normal drones but will still be sexually viable. In the picture, I"m holding the tip of the cage that contains candy. The candy acts like a barrier to protect the queen and for the host bees to eat through the candy to release the queen. Approximately 6 days to release. The queen will be hungry enough by then to solicit food from the workers and spread more of her pheromone.


Vancouver clearly has a shortage of reliable bee suppliers. At this time, I would only recommend Honeyland Canada at Pitt Meadows runned by Dr Bee for my beekeeping needs.